The deck headline: “House Republican leaders are eager to fulfill their promise to vote to repeal the legislation, but taking up the divisive issue could hurt the party at a time of calls for rejecting partisan rhetoric.”

As lawmakers promise a new era of comity after the Arizona shooting attack that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in critical condition, Republican leaders grappled with how and when to return to an issue that brought political discourse to a boiling point.

. . . .

Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) called [a GOP approach to push the repeal] a mistake. “I think good judgment would say, let’s extend this period of healing before the House returns to something as divisive as healthcare,” he said.

Because, what with Giffords’ shooting being motivated by partisan right-wing rhetoric, it’s only right.

Oh, I’m sorry: I got the mantra wrong. We don’t know what motivated Loughner, but nevertheless, it is a good time to discuss the awful rhetoric that the GOP is using to poison the discourse.

Never mind that the “calls for rejecting partisan rhetoric” are based on a huge steaming pile of lies. This is the New Reality. They have repeated it again and again and you will fall in line.

They will tell you what to say. They will tell you when to say it. They will tell you what bills you are allowed to bring.

In the meantime, I ask you (very calmly) to shut up, so you can stop inciting murders the way you have been.

By the way, both Pat Dollard and one of my commenters contacted the reporter on that rotten and Godawful L.A. Times piece claiming that Loughner’s views were “rooted in the far right.” The reporter told them that she hated the headline and asked them to change it. Sure enough, it has now been changed:

Experts see echoes of extremism in Loughner’s ramblings

Experts say the suspect in the Arizona shooting rampage is fixated on issues cited by other extremists. But he also appears to have been influenced by the far left.

The story is still crap, but that’s less of a blatant lie than the original. Progress! Sort of.

Now if we can just get them to allow us to discuss health care repeal, and call ObamaCare what it really is (dangerous), and so forth.

I think if we wait until the time is right, and ask nicely, they may just let us do it.

Or, we could just say: we’ll call this bill what it is, and we’ll seek to repeal it immediately. Take your calls for civility and shove them.

Me, I’m kinda sorta done being nice with the people who have spent the past five days calmly accusing conservatives of responsibility for the murder of a nine year-old.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: I am not even going to bother to embed this video because you know it will get pulled for its blatant violation of copyright, but some smartass decided to add a soundtrack to the Palin Hate Tweet video. You can watch it, here.

Important Update: We have a second Tweeter who argues very plausibly that she was denouncing this reaction and was misunderstood. She writes more, here. I will flag that one appropriately below. Thanks to “1redthread” in the comments for bringing this to my attention.

We now resume the original post…

Hey media, maybe you will get your wish and someone can assassinate her, right? As we sit here tonight we learn that Sarah Palin is getting unprecedented levels of threats against her and her family:

An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor’s team has been talking to security professionals.

Since the shooting in Tucson, Palin has taken much heat for her “crosshairs” map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday’s attack.

That is from ABC News, which doesn’t bother mention what the same network carried out an interview this morning with Zach Osler, Jared Loughner’s friend, where the young man said of the killer:

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.

Don’t you think it is relevant, ABC, that your own reporting has demonstrated for a fact that she is right to deny responsibility?

So what the media falsely accused Palin of doing, of stirring up violent anger toward Ms. Giffords, the media actually has done to Sarah Palin. We can only hope that none of those nitwits will actually act on those threats.

Of course we can take some solace from further evidence that this blood libel just isn’t working. But as Lee Harvey Oswald demonstrated, it only takes one liberal nutjob to create a tragedy.

Meanwhile, you might remember the twits on Twitter who threatened Palin. Those tweets made it into YouTube video which I posted previously.

First, as constructive criticism, I think Patrick is right to say that there is no evidence that this first man is guilty of any kind of violent invective.

It seems he is simply pointing out other violent invective, and has stated he didn’t agree with it but merely wanted to highlight that absurd bit of hate. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

But meanwhile one of the Twits on Twitter complained that this invaded her privacy. Mind you, all he did was take a screencap of an image she put on the internet for all the universe to see. And now she thinks somehow this was a private conversation? There is simply put no way in hell this is covered by any theory of privacy. Regardless of the illogic of her assertion, YouTube pulled the video. Big Journalism and Legal Insurrection have a lot more on this silly story.

Still, they can’t kill the message. Thanks to helpful commenters on this site, I have both a copy of the YouTube video of my own and screencaps of each and every ugly tweet. As Prof. Jacobson says, “You can’t take it back on the internet.”

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

So as you saw in a previous point that Sarah Palin called this smear campaign against her a “blood libel.” And the chattering monkeys of the left started screaming against their cages. How dare she? Doesn’t she know that this is the sole and exclusive province of the Jews?

The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s use of the phrase in her video, which helped make it rapidly go viral, is itself attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

Reaction to Ms. Palin’s video was swift.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who is a close friend of Ms. Giffords, issued a statement condemning her use of the phrase “blood libel.”

“Palin’s comments either show a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism,” said Jonathan Beeton, Ms. Wasserman Shultz’s spokesman. “Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Giffords’s faith and the events of the past week.”…

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of a pro-Israel group called J Street, said that “when Governor Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words.”

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

George Gooding, aka “Seixon” had a comment to my last post worth paying attention to, although it will take a little set up. Toward the end of the post I pointed out how Rep. Clyburn said that supposedly reading the constitution aloud was part of the unacceptable behavior that contributed to the hate that allegedly led Jared Loughner to shoot Rep. Giffords and all of those innocents. So then I showed video of Giffords herself reading the First Amendment out loud and ridiculed Clyburn by saying, “So, OMG, that means that this wasn’t attempted murder on Giffords. This was attempted suicide by Constitution reading!”

But Seixon actually made the surprisingly plausible argument that maybe it really was related. Now I don’t buy this as a defense to Clyburn—I think he is ascribing a level of depth and sincerity that is absent from Clyburn’s analysis. But don’t get distracted by that. Instead pay attention to the logic on its own:

Well, back up a minute on that last part. I think that it might be the only reasonable thing Clyburn said, that Giffords reading of the Constitution might have caused the shooting.

Why?

1. Loughner was paranoid about the government and particularly about the Constitution, which he considers treasonous and false

2. Giffords, his congresswoman, whom he already dislikes from their previous encounter, and thinks is stupid – is televised reading from… the Constitution. That he hates.

Two days later, he goes and shoots her at the next available opportunity.

If I were the police investigating this, that would be my first theory to the motive/cause of his psychotic outburst of violence. Perhaps it’s not why it happened, but using the scientific method, you go with what you’ve got, posit a theory, test it, and find out if it holds water.

So I wouldn’t dismiss this notion outright, just because Clyburn eased in on it.

I think it’s good, but I worry that she is depending on people knowing what is going on more than they do. I mean, bluntly, most of you reading this are probably political nerds. I am one, too. But how about the rest of the country? I remember reading a few years ago when Daily Kos actually got reflective (don’t laugh) when he noted a poll that said a shockingly low number of Americans even knew who Ann Coulter was. Something like 20%. Now of the people reading this right now, I am willing to bet the number is more like 99%.

It’s a rhetorical question, to be sure, that I pose at the end of the post below: why the fact-free blood libel, from the L.A. Times or any other lefty? Again, I won’t insult your intelligence by answering the question — but just to confirm that you’re on the right track, I commend to you these Quotes of the Day from Hot Air.

Every single one is about how the Republicans really need to tone it down — especially when seeking to repeal health care.

When they turn back to the health law Republicans will focus on moderating their tone, strategists said, in contrast with some lawmakers’ stronger language from last year’s campaign. . . . “‘Now you want to revisit all that?’ Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told The Hill. ‘Having invested so much in distorting and exaggerating the rhetoric of healthcare reform, the opponents of reform now find themselves on the horns of a dilemma.’” . . . . “There is an unmistakable redbaiting quality to the ‘job-killing’ rhetoric, a throwback to the McCarthy era. . . . . “A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the ‘Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act,’ was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby’s shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend — but is it really necessary to put the word ‘killing’ in the title of a major piece of legislation?

Do you get it yet? Hear it, in your mind, as a sooooothing matriarchal voice.

Yes, we know you’re angry about the ObamaCare and all. But please. Let’s be civil.

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